“On Tuesday, Bullish Cross‘ Andy Zaky, representing a group of unaffiliated analysts who track Apple (AAPL) in blogs, challenged the professionals who do it for banks and brokerage houses — and whom the bloggers believe are largely clueless (see Apple Q1 2009 earnings smackdown),” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune. “So now that Apple has reported its 2009 Q1 earnings, how did the two teams do?”
The results are summarized in a chart in the full article with red numbers being the worst two estimates and green numbers the best two.
Elmer-DeWitt reports, “What’s immediately apparent is the sharp difference in sentiment. The bloggers tend to be bullish, the Street — at least on Apple — tends to bearishness. And on the number that matters most to investors — earnings per share — the bloggers were right on the money, missing the actual EPS by only a few pennies. The Street, by contrast, underestimated Apple’s earnings by 40 cents a share — a stunning 22.5%.”
MacDailyNews Take: We have no doubt that many of the “pro” analysts could predict more accurately if doing so served their purposes.
Elmer-DeWitt reports, “The best individual performance goes to a professional, RBC Capital’s Mike Abramsky, who had three greens and no reds, correctly calling (or at least getting in the ball park of) unit sales numbers for iPhones, iPods and Macs — although he did miss revenues by $367 million and, bizarrely, has the lowest price target for Apple in the business: $70 a share.”
Elmer-DeWitt reports, “On the other hand, the two worst performances were also turned in by professionals: Bernstein Research’s Toni Sacconaghi, who scored no greens and missed Apple’s revenue number by $874 million, and Morgan Stanley’s Kathryn Huberty, who underestimated unit sales in every category and missed the iPod number by 6.27 million units… For everybody else, it was mixed bag.”
MacDailyNews Take: Nothing surprising there.
Full article with charts – recommended – here.
